Ranger advancement
FredN
Member Posts: 245
I'm relatively early on in SoA, so I still have Minsc in my crew. I foolishly gave him Lilacor, and now I have two psychotics in the party. Oh well. Anyway, I noticed that Minsc took a lot longer to gain levels than the rest, so I looked at the profession advancement tables. Wizardly types advance slower than anyone up until level 7. Then all of a sudden the rquirements for Rangers to gain a level shoots way up. By level 9 they need 2x as much experience as a pure magic user. Why? Are rangers so OP compared to everyone else that they have to be held back in order to preserve game balance? I'm just not seeing it.
Note: I am referring to the pure vanilla ranger like MInsc, not one of the subclasses.
Note: I am referring to the pure vanilla ranger like MInsc, not one of the subclasses.
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Also, the XP tables were largely copied from the tabletop game.
Mages have a different experience table - higher experience costs than fighters at low and high levels, but an odd patch around level 9 where their XP requirements are lower.
And the druid XP table is just weird.
The one Ranger class that looks decent is the Archer. I haven't tried it myself, but Grand Mastery in a type of bow, plus something like the Tuigan Bow, the Bow of Gesen, or the Firetooth crossbow sounds pretty nasty.
As such, I think Stalker is the most fun ranger kit to use. It has a great progression throughout the saga, slowly increasing in various powers. Try out a Stalker that relies on the quarterstaff to backstab.
For a simple demonstration of how a stealthy ranger will help you, simply boot up a new game of SoA. Release Minsc from his cell. Avoid equipping heavy armor. And then go shut down the lightning device in one of the first encounters you will have in the game with a stealthed Minsc. A simple demonstration of what an asset he, or other rangers, can be for your party, but only if you use them correctly.
I think he's especially great in a party that relies on Imoen for its thieving, as her skill points are limited. Or Valygar is even better. Also, leaving these guys stealthed all the time at the start of combat has a strong tendency to make them not targets in combat. The tiny bit of range Minsc gets with the 2H swords helps here too. Meaning the armor class deficit is less of an issue, with good tactics. You can also invest a bit in potions of defense or invulnerability, just for those small number of fights where you may need him to tank a bit.
My personal suggestion for his weapon proficiencies is to add two points to quarterstaff and one point to 2h weapon style. And buy the +4 staff from the adventurer's mart. You can have a set up, eventually, where he dual wields katanas for melee combat, uses the quarterstaff for backstabs (or slashing immune/resistant) and also uses the longbow for when that's appropriate. Making him extremely versatile.
Valy is a favorite of mine, even if he doesn't get the infinitely better abilities of two certain lads who are an inquisitor and berserker.. those two are just mint.
But to be honest, there's nothing about rangers (possibly except the Archer subclass) that warrants so much slower levelling than fighter.. Grand Mastery is better than anything a ranger can do in most situations.
One thing rangers and paladins get though, is the Armor of Faith spell.. which combined with Flail of Ages can give you very, very good damage reduction even early in SoA.. combined with warrior HLA Hardiness later on, and they can have 85% resistance to physical damage.. Fighters cap at 60% with Flail of Ages and need other items to go beyond that.
Physical resistance is much more important than AC later on in the saga.
Valygar, Minsc and Blackguard McOrcface are the only npc that can get Armor of Faith + Warrior HLA.
.....OK, now I have to ask: why a quarterstaff for backstabbing? There are a number of one handed weapons around that do decent damage, and if you are concerned about the rare foe that takes reduced damage from edged, there are blunt weapons that can serve. And why dual wield katanas instead of something like Spectral Brand and the Sword of Mask? Well, OK, you could make a case for wielding Ceestial Fury as one of your duo of weapons, but how about Belm or Kundane in the off hand for the extra attack? If you insist on wielding a 2 hander, how about using Lilarcor with it's spell immunities? Lastly, wielding a one handed weapon lets you use a shield. I forget the name, but there's a shield that reflects Beholder rays. Pretty useful when doing the Cult of the Eyeless quest.
I also simply don't think it's worth discussing late game, ToB, Cespenar-built weapons on this board. There's a tendency on here to talk about the best items in the game without acknowledging that most of the adventure, you won't play with them!
You can definitely build Valygar to be tanky with a shield and a katana, I think that's a perfectly fine thing to do instead of dual-wielding. However, the setup I've described gives you 1. blunt option, 2. high dmg backstab options, 3. slashing option, 4. ranged option, all with only having to invest 3 pips beyond Valygar's base investments. You're simply not going to get as effective of versatility, especially in the SoA part, with other set ups.
Frankly, I also think the inventory system is crap, and players are better off not hauling around a bunch of gear in their inventory slots and should instead just liquidate extra gear into gold. But, again, that's my personal taste. Obviously with bags of holding, etc, you can haul around whatever, but you're adding alot of tedious, repetitive inventory management to your play time.
.....And ranged weapons are a shoe in. I grabbed the +3 Elven Court bow very early on, from the Golem room in Nalia's Keep. +1 arrows are pretty easy to come by as well.
Oh, and the most powerful backstab weapons? In SoA, it's the Staff of Striking. You can buy that in some temple shops, though it has limited charges. In ToB, it's the Staff of the Ram. Backwhacking with a staff is highly effective throughout the entire series.
A side not, but the reason I focus on early-acquirable gear is that's when the player has the most choices to make. ToB is pretty linear, doesn't have many purchase-able top tier weapons. Much harder for newer players to know what to buy/equip in Chapter 2 than what to use while standing next to Cespenar.
Ya, chose to not count her due to no Flail. Should have been more precise on that.
.....Let me expand on this. Jaheria is a multi-class, not dual class. Fighter mages are multi-class also, and they can use all wepaons available for fighters. Jahera is a multi-class, but cannot use all weapons available for fighters. This seems to me like an inherent contradiction in the rules. All multi-class combinations should be treated alike.
.....Obviously, game designers can define character classes any way they want, like requiring gnome fighter/mages to be illusionists. I am just curious about the rationale here.
As for what weapons druids can use ... that's a matter of some weird pseudo-historical flavor decisions by the designers of D&D. The computer game just copied from the tabletop game.
(Everything about D&D druids before 3rd edition is weird)
So a cleric or druid multiclass keeps the class's weapon bans, and a thief or mage multiclass allows anything the other class can use.
Addendum: I suspect the designers implemented this on the basis of what happened in RL. Long ago, there was a Church decree that prohibited militant priests from using edged weapons in combat; they weren't allowed to shed blood. Apparently, bashing an opponent's head in with a mace or war hammer was perfectly fine. Deus vult!
I always ran a Greek mythology inspired game, so naturally I had Cleric of Poseidon allowed to use tridents. Clerics of Apollo could use bows. Clerics of Athena could use any melee weapon but no missile weapons. Etc….
There are a couple mods for the IE games that do something similar. I find this aids immersion and story-telling immensely. But of course the base game simply goes with base rules and a generic cleric (with some very minor tweaks for a limited number of “cleric kits”).
It also might be worth mentioning there was originally some play balance reasons for this too. In 1E (and earlier, D&D Basic and White Box) there was no Weapon Specialization. And everyone starts with a 20 Thaco. So literally the only thing separating a 1st level cleric and a 1st level fighter in combat would be a d8 vs a d10 hit die; without weapon restrictions. So the restrictions further widened the difference between clerics and fighters in pure combat.
Obviously, once weapon specialization entered the game (originally in Dragon Magazine, then in Unearthed Arcana. What is sometimes referred to as 1.5E) fighters had something special that clerics did not. And I think, in an instant, cleric weapon restrictions became meaningless (from a gameplay perspective).
Some players complain about freedom, but I think it's short-sighted. The games become less interesting when the classes are more similar.
To give you an idea of possible damage output with a Qstaff. Granted this is from TOB against myconids with a multiclass fighter/thief and the best staff in the game upgraded.
Nope! It’s a truly lethal combo in TOB.
The only reason I brought it up, was to note that rangers absolutely should make use of their stealth as a way to take advantage of the class. And not feel like you simply have a weaker version of a fighter. And to note that Qstaff is probably the best long-term option for Valygar or a custom-made Stalker.
I understand that sneaking and backstabbing can be a terrific and effective way to build a character and team. But as the cliche goes, you be you.